What is the Speech Retreat, Anyway?

If you have been following me on social media, you know that I recently returned from the first ever Speech Retreat in Anaheim, California!

The Speech Retreat is a new kind of professional development for school based speech-language pathologists - it is an entire day of practical, hands-on ideas and advice that you can immediately implement to make your life as a busy school SLP easier and more efficient! Our goal is for therapists to leave refreshed, recharged, and ready to tackle the new school year with increased confidence and ideas.

The Speech Retreat is a collaborative effort between myself, Hallie Sherman from Speech Time Fun, Felice Clark from The Dabbling Speechie, and Maureen Wilson from The Speech Bubble SLP. We’ve been planning the first Retreat for the past six months, and had such an amazing inaugural event! Today, I wanted to take you a bit behind the scenes if you weren’t able to make it.

One of our guiding principles behind planning the Speech Retreat was to be transparent and honest about what it is like to live the #speechlife, and for our attendees to know they aren’t alone in their challenges, and offer them solutions. The real #speechlife is not always beautifully organized, or with thoroughly planned therapy sessions, or stress-free. But it is, as I think most SLPs would agree, one of the best jobs in the world!

We had 125 amazing SLPs, SLP-As, and graduate students give up a day of their summer to spend with us, learning all things speechie! They came from near and far, including ones who flew from Minnesota and Tennessee(!).

Our day included sessions on:

Power Hour: Organization, Data Collection, & more

30 Ideas for Therapy That Take 30 Seconds - or Less - to Prep

Make and Takes - practical ideas that our attendees were able to leave the retreat with an implement the next day

Adapting Materials for Different Ages & Disorders

Tricky SLP Situations (including tips on push-in therapy, how and when to say “no,” how to manage as a traveling therapist, ideas for working with older students, and AAC)

We also had a tremendous amount of giveaways from some generous sponsors, including:

I must admit, I’m much more comfortable behind a computer screen than I am up on stage in front of a crowd, but presenting with some of my best friends and in front of such an amazing audience made it such a wonderful experience!

Because we had such a tremendous response for the first Speech Retreat, we have already planned our second one! We’ll be in Chicago on Saturday, October 14 - you can find out more information and sign up at www.speechretreat.com. Our tickets are about 75% sold out right now, so I would encourage you to grab your seat this week before they are all gone!

What do you think? Would you come to the Speech Retreat if we came to your area? We'll be making plans for Summer 2018 soon!

PS: Interested in becoming a sponsor? Send me an email at natalie@slpnataliesnyders.com!